Call a book postmodern and I sigh. Oh, I’ll read it, but I’ll brace my Aristotelian brain for repeated violations of that tired old beginning, middle and end structure; the consequent loss of heart, sympathetic characters, and suspense; and the utter absence of humor.
Now, I don’t need characters bringing me aspirin and a hot-water bottle if I've got cramps; nor do I need one of those soppy books that hit the bestseller list and renew every American woman’s longing for romance. But as I’m admiring wordplay and soaking in ideas, I do like an occasional chuckle. And uncool as it may be, I like to care what happens next.
McSweeney’s restored my faith once again with Vacation, the first novel of Deb Olin Unferth. She shuttles gleefully among her characters and the tenses, and tensions, of their lives, but she gives you plenty of string to wrap around your wrist, and she’s an author you don’t mind leading you wherever she wants you to go. Her gamesmanship never smacks of superiority; it’s more the amused wink of an old, conspiratorial friend. She writes about sad lives gone, with one slight twist of fate’s wheel, entirely off course. But she takes these ordinary (and all too typical) characters and grants them interest, quirky experiences, even a certain dignity. Vacation does not tell us we are mediocre and disoriented and our deaths will be as banal as our lives. It plants the mundane in an exotic place, gives it a moment or two of glory, reveals the mysteries people present to each other.
Best of all, it’s funny. Proving of course that humor’s nothing more than fresh perspective, the kind that cuts us loose from self-indulgence—and keeps us from boring even ourselves.
--Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer
